Liquid pressurization systems produce high pressure (e.g., up to 90,000 pounds per square inch or greater) streams of liquid for various applications. For example, high pressure liquid may be delivered to a liquid jet cutting head, a cleaning tool, a pressure vessel or an isostatic press. In the case of liquid jet cutting systems, liquid is forced through a small orifice at high velocity to concentrate a large amount of energy on a small area. To cut hard materials, a liquid jet can be “abrasive” or include abrasive particles for increasing cutting ability. As used herein, the term “liquid jet” includes any substantially pure water jet, liquid jet, and/or slurry jet. However, one of ordinary skill in the art would easily appreciate that the invention applies equally to other systems that use liquid pumps or similar technology.
Many key components of pumps for liquid pressurization systems require frequent maintenance or replacement. For example, common failure modes in liquid pressurization pumps include: leaking of seal assemblies and plunger hydraulic seals; fatigue failures of high pressure cylinders, check valves, proximity switches, and attenuators; and wearing of bleed down valves due to repeated venting of high pressure water in the pump at shut down. Currently, each time a key component of a liquid pressurization pump fails, a pump operator must disable the pump to perform repairs, causing the system to suffer substantial down time. Usage hours for key system components are currently tracked manually, but manual tracking suffers from significant drawbacks. First, manual tracking is time-consuming and cumbersome, particularly when many replaceable components must be monitored. Second, manual tracking does not effectively minimize system down time. What is needed is a liquid pressurization system that efficiently tracks usage of key system components, predicts failure modes in advance of system failure, and optimizes replacement schedules to minimize system down time.